Hemalkasa was the place that truly shaped the politics of Baba's 'late
youth'. It was also his most daring act of valour, defying his physical
pain. In 1973, barely a year after he had undergone surgery for his back
problem, Baba pitched a tent at Hemalkasa, a place deep in the forests about
350 kilometres south of Nagpur. This took him back to the carefree days, in
his teens, when he had roamed these forests on his hunting expeditions. He
liked being among the adivasis. Their innocence and cheer delighted him.
But, at the same time their material existence appalled Baba. For thirty
years he had dreamt of ways to help the
adivasis to benefit from modern civilization without becoming estranged from
the beauty and strengths of their own culture. Now, he submerged the agony
of his body to work vigorously to realize this dream. Travelling from
village to village he began to work for improving health among the Madia
Gonds.

In 1974, Baba and Tai's younger son, Prakash, graduated from
medical college and came to work in Hemalkasa. Soon Prakash and his wife
Mandakini, who had been a fellow-student, decided to settle there
permanently. Like the senior Amtes, this couple faced many years of struggle
with severe hardships, shortages of food, medicine and susceptibility to
many diseases.

Gradually, the hardships decreased and a community of workers
came together based on a shared bond with the local people, the wild animals
and the abundant fauna and flora. This community includes Renuka, whom Baba
and Tai had adopted as an infant, and her husband Vilas Manohar. Vilas later
recorded the enriching explorations of the Hemalkasa family in a popular
Marathi book entitled Negal,
Tiger Cub. European friends who visited Hemalkasa saw Prakash and Mandakini
as the Albert Schweifzers of India. In the late-80s some of these admirers
convinced the principality of Monaco
to issue a special stamp commemorating the young Amtes' work.

By now Baba had further fine-tuned his understanding of how
'development' was making the life of tribal
communities more difficult. Two major hydel power
projects were coming up in the area around Hemalkasa the
Inchampalli dam on the Godavari River and the
Bhopalpatnam dam on the Indravati River. These projects
would submerge about two lakh acres of land, half of which
was prime forest. As a member of the District Planning
Board Baba sought relevant information on the projects and
examined their impact on the tribal communities. On the
basis of this study, he persuaded his colleagues on the Board that the
projects would wreak havoc on the local cornmunities with little benefit to
society at large.

In July 1983, Baba wrote to Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi, and urged the government to consider other ways
of generating electricity. Why spend so much money on
gigantic projects, Baba questioned? 'A series of smaller dams
could, I submit, adequately meet the water and energy needs
of the people, including electricity for industry, without
degrading the environment. My discussions with
government technocrats familiar with this region strengthen
this view,' he wrote.
In a polite reply the prime minister promised to 'pursue
the matter'. She directed the Planning Commission to
carefully examine the case. Meanwhile, opposition to these
projects was mounting from several different quarters.
Environmental activists questioned the data on which the
cost-benefit ratio of the project was based. For example, the
Maharashtra Forest Department estimated the loss of 40,000
acres of standing forest at Rs 9 crore. But if the calculation
was made on the basis of the recurring annual yield,
enhanced by proper management, the estimated value was
close to Rs 2,500 crore.

Baba joined the effort to mobilize a popular opposition
to the projects and in 1984 thousands of tribals marched to
the District Collector's office demanding that the projects be
withdrawn. Eventually a combination of this local action
and lobbying in the corridors of power led to the cancellation
of these projects. This sangharsh drew Baba one step closer
to his destined home on the banks of the Narmada.

Narmada bachao

Rising partly from the bed, resting his weight on one elbow,
Baba looked out of the window of the van in which he was
travelling. The year was 1990. The van moved slowly across
a bridge over the Narmada. A string of tractor trolleys
preceded the van and several more were following behind
it. Sky blue flags, carrying the emblem of the Narmada
Bachao Andolan (NBA), fluttered all over the procession.
The men, women and children crowded into the tractor
trolleys were repeating the key slogan of the Andolan: 'Koi
nahin hatega, bandh nahin banega (No one will move, the dam
will not be built)'.

The sun was setting in a bright orange splash over the
river waters below, as Baba's van reached the centre of the
bridge. Suddenly the tractors swerved sideways and came
to a halt, blocking the road. The NBA now informed the
accompanying policemen that they intended to block this
bridge, and thus the Mumbai-Agra highway, till their
demand for a review of the Sardar Sarovar Project was
heard.

For the next thirty hours hundreds of people from
different parts of the Narmada valley made the bridge their
home. The specially-fitted van, which had earlier carried
Baba to the corners of India on the Knit India March, now
became the nerve centre of this protest action.

A few days earlier, Baba had taken yet another big leap
into the future and bid farewell to his beloved Anandwan.
Few people in that gathering on the bridge realized just
where Baba was coming from, both literally and
metaphorically. Some of the villagers were surprised to find
that this 'baba' didn't look like any holy man or 'mahatma'
they had ever seen. After the rasta-roko on the Khalghat
bridge, a smaller procession led Baba's van with proper
fanfare to the little village of Kasravad, some five kilometres
from the town of Badwani in the western corner of Madhya
Pradesh.

Soon the jubilant crowd melted away and Baba was left
to quietly examine his new home. Before him, on the barren
sandy slope, was a two-room cement and brick
structure-which the local villagers had constructed for
him. For a flash, time seemed to melt away. He seemed to be
back at the beginning when he had first stood staring at the
scrub land near Warora. Baba retreated into his van, away
from the anguish of this inhospitable site. Already he missed
Anandwan, his home for forty years. Then, slowly the river,
Rewa Maiya, began to work her magic on him.

For all appearances the move to Kasravad was a
political, strategic manoeuvre, a kind of public relations
coup for the Narmada Bachao Andolan. But, like every other
action in Baba's life this one was a response to a pukar, a
calling. Once again, he was drawn not by an external cause
but the inner pull of the eternal beauty of the Narmada 'so
pure, so holy, that the mere sight of her absolves one of all
sins'.

Baba's involvement with the issue of mega-dams had
been growing through the 1980s. In the summer of 1988 the
Anandwan community hosted a meeting of over a hundred
environmental activists from all over India on this issue. The
'Assertion of Collective Will Against Big Dams', also called the 'Anandwan
Declaration', became a landmark in the emerging movement against big dams.

With characteristic flair Baba had articulated the case against the
Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) in a booklet entitled Cry 0 Beloved Narmada,
published from Warora in July 1989.
Addressed 'To the People of India' the booklet, for all its poetic
overtones, gave a concise account of why the SSP was a social, economic and
ecological disaster-in-making. In 1987-88 the final cost of the project was
estimated at over Rs 11,000 crore. The submergence caused by the reservoir
would displace about one lakh people. In addition thousands more
would be displaced by the network canals. Baba used official data and tables
to show that the benefits of the SSP had been greatly exaggerated and its
costs grossly underestimated. He pointed out that the
government had made a farce out of the statutorily mandatory environmental
clearance. The booklet went on to
argue that proper rehabilitation for all oustees was an impossibility. It
also recounted the emerging protests
against the mega-dam and government efforts to suppress the agitation
through use of the Official Secrets Act and police force. Baba concluded
with an appeal to 'My Beloved State of Gujarat' - pleading that the various alternatives to
big dams on the Narmada be actively examined :

When the frontiers of science are pushing
relentlessly towards technologies as dispersed as
the golden rays of the sun, I will not let my beloved
state of Gujarat fulfil a death wish by adopting an
antediluvian technology. The science of large dams
now seems to belong to the age of superstition; the
coming century belongs to the technology of mini
and micro dams and watershed development
ensembles. I want Gujarat to join in this bright
future.

By the end of 1989 Baba had decided to move to the
banks of the Narmada:

The time has come to leave Anandwan, the place
where I entered into the world of joy, the place that
symbolizes the very meaning of my existence. I am leaving to live along the
Narmada ... to attain a
peace that all mankind desires. The struggle for a New India is taking place
in the Narmada valley.
Today the Narmada valley has become the arena for a new imagination and
creativity, for a society in
which there must be sufficiency for all before there is superfluity for
some.

Now living on the banks of the Narmada, Baba heard
the echoes of a pervasive violence against all forms of life,
including the river herself. Can the mighty blessings of the
mother goddess help us to yoke all our forces to shelter her?'
Baba asked himself and his contemporaries:

Will we be able to blaze a divine halo around her
that no power on earth can defile ? Or will her cries
never be heard again? Will we bequeath to her only
tombstones with a sad tale to tell?

While he pondered such unanswerable questions Baba
got busy in, quite literally, sowing the seeds of a
mini-Anandwan. Accompanied by Tai and helpers from his
old home Baba planted carefully selected trees and bushes
all around the two-room house. Soon a makeshift shed was
added on the east side of the house, expanding the space to
accommodate the inevitable stream of guests. But in the first
year Baba was often on the road as activities of the NBA reached a peak.

Facing the 'other'

Ferkuwa, a small kasba on the Gujarat-Madhya Pradesh
border, was an unlikely place for a historical showdown and
one of the most fretful moments of Baba's life. Yet here were scores of
people from the submergence zone of the SSP marching towards police
barricades with their hands folded and tied. Leading them, his hands also
tied, Baba appealed to the police that they be allowed to pass peacefully
into Gujarat. But the reply was a menacing waving of lathis. Hundreds of
people standing just behind the police shouted
pro-dam slogans and with angry fervour told Baba to 'Go Back'.

In the last week of 1990, thousands of people affected by
the project had set off from Badwani, M.P., on a march to the
dam site. The 'Sangharsh Yatra' was halted at the Gujarat
border. The yatris squatted by the roadside and refused to
move. Medha Patkar and five others began a fast to draw
attention to their cause. On the other side of the barricade,
the wife of the Gujarat chief minister led a dharna of those
in favour of the SSP.

For almost three weeks, both sides shouted slogans and
allegations at each other across the police barriers. Baba,
with his van stuck between the two camps, was caught in
more ways than one. He knew that confrontation was not
the solution. And he despaired at his own inability to
convince, to persuade, the 'other side' about the folly of the
dam. For almost thirty years the people of Gujarat had been
told that the SSP would transform the state and become its
'life-line'. This dream was not easily challenged. On the
anti-dam side, some of the younger activists doubted
persuasion as a means and saw a tougher confrontation as
the only way of resolving a conflict.

Baba persevered in persuading them that this was not a
war between the people of Gujarat and M.P. Every sundown
he became more anxious for the well-being of the activists
who were fasting. As the fast crossed the three-week mark,
supporters of the cause all over the country began to panic.

Medha's kidneys were rumoured to be in danger of
collapsing. The Central government was deluged by
national and international phone calls and telegrams, urging
it to call for a comprehensive review of the SSP. There is no
question of a review, insisted the Gujarat chief minister
Chimanbhai Patel. Medha refused to break the fast unless a
review was promised. And so the stalemate deepened.

Eventually, supporters of the NBA mobilized a team of
eminent citizens to hold a review of the SSP. Thus, the fast
was called off and the almost month-long road-side
gathering of thousands at Ferkuwa was dismantled. The
dharna had failed in its effort to get an official review of the
SSP. But the month-long action, competing for media
attention with nothing less than the Gulf War, put the
struggle of the NBA firmly in public view. Medha now
became a national public figure, featuring on the cover of
several magazines. Baba returned to Kasravad convinced
that the battle may have been only partly won but the tide
of the war had turned in their favour.